![]() THE CITY’s analysis also documents longstanding accusations that Signature repeatedly awarded loans to property owners notorious for long histories of violations and lawsuits. The neighborhoods with the highest Signature presence are Bushwick and Williamsburg with more than 300 loans, Inwood and Washington Heights with 239, Central Brooklyn with 188 and Bronx Park and Fordham with 174. The universe spans affluent neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, where one apartment in a Signature-financed building listed for nearly $13,000 a month, to communities in the South Bronx and central Brooklyn where tenants use government housing vouchers to pay for apartments that have fallen into extreme disrepair. More than half that value is in buildings with apartments covered by rent-stabilization. The sale portfolio includes 2,939 multifamily buildings with an estimated listed market value of about $20 billion. To document the vast scope of Signature’s influence across New York’s four largest boroughs, THE CITY analyzed municipal property and financial records, visited a wide range of buildings with mortgages up for sale, and reviewed lawsuits and internal bank documents. This leaves a fundamental question for government agencies: How hard should they press potential mortgage buyers to enforce basic housing standards in properties they finance? Tenant advocates want them to do so aggressively, but could that scare off prospective bidders wary of government intervention? What the Numbers Say ![]() “That’s why so many of us are concerned about the future of the buildings in the Signature portfolio,” he added. “Over the years, many buildings in The Bronx have suffered when mortgages fell into the wrong hands,” said Jim Buckley, the executive director of the University Neighborhood Housing Program (UNHP), a housing advocacy group, who cited the example of massive foreclosures in the late ‘80’s that negatively affected many buildings and families. But, given the bargain-bin possibilities, industry observers suggest that the auction could also attract buyers looking for faster and larger profits through landlords willing to squeeze already troubled buildings. The winning bidders could be well-established banks interested in steady long-term returns from responsible landlords. As the FDIC’s process unfolds, banking and real estate experts widely assume that the mortgages will sell at steep discounts and that the buyers are likely to profit handsomely from Signature’s misfortune.īut in the absence of any public detail about the process, speculation has been intense about almost every aspect of the sale, including its possible effects on tens of thousands of building residents. Now, the FDIC has a couple billion dollar problem.”Īnd tenants may have a problem as well. “Signature may have had a couple billion dollar problem. “The building is not only not worth what they paid for it, but it might not even be worth the amount they owe the bank,” said Michael Weiser, president of GFI Realty, a real estate investment firm involved in the sale of billions of dollars of property around New York. The 2019 changes in the law closed off most of the routes for accomplishing this, depriving owners of the income they needed to profit, run their buildings and cover their mortgages. Likely to be at least as concerning for potential bidders are the scores of properties where the bank supported aggressive landlords who had aimed to remove apartments from rent stabilization restrictions and substantially increase their rents on the open market. Piller did not respond to THE CITY’s requests for comment.Īn analysis by THE CITY shows that Piller and the other Signature landlords on the list own 411 buildings that had 15,299 open housing violations at the beginning of the year. ![]() The bank was a go-to mortgagee for a third of the building owners on the New York City Public Advocate’s 100 worst landlords list, and their properties abound in housing violations and accumulated debt. While the portfolio includes many stable, well-managed buildings that could emerge from the mortgage sale unaffected, it also includes hundreds of vulnerable properties like Piller’s at 4575 Park Avenue, and others whose value plummeted after a significant strengthening of the stabilization law in 2019 reduced the value of a key Signature investment strategy. On the auction block are loans covering nearly 3,000 buildings with more than 80,000 apartments - 80% of them containing units covered by the state’s rent-stabilization law, which regulates roughly 1 million mostly middle and working class apartments in New York City. Members and sponsors make THE CITY possible.
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